Rate-compatible path-pruned convolutional codes and their applications on channels with insertion, deletion and substitution errors

A concatenated system is presented to achieve unequal error protection (UEP) on a channel with insertion/deletion/substitution (IDS) errors. By using a feedback-mapping encoder scheme, the path-pruning of a convolutional code is achieved to periodically generate a specific block code, which can be exploited to correct insertion or deletion errors. This paper presents a general means to obtain a path-pruned convolutional code with specific trellis structure by using the puncturing and pruning processes. One application combining the rate-compatible path-pruned convolutional code, partial interleaving, and Reed-Solomon code was implemented to evaluate its performance on the IDS channel.